


In the Quiet

by glimmerglanger



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 1, Prompt: Stitches, Spoilers for Season 1, Touch-Starved, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 01:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20986793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: It took only days for the first riot on the Row. Vignette wasn’t sure how it started, exactly: if one slight set it off, or a dozen. Hard to name an exact cause when they were all crammed in together, increasingly hungry, half of them without a roof over their head, and all of them, always, under the sneering watch of the Burgish guards.





	In the Quiet

It took only days for the first riot on the Row. Vignette wasn’t sure how it started, exactly, if one slight set it off, or a dozen. Hard to name an exact cause when they were all crammed in together, increasingly hungry, half of them without a roof over their head, and all of them, always, under the sneering watch of the Burgish guards.

She and Philo had ended up in the middle of it; she’d darted forward to grab a child out from below a centaur’s hooves, he’d followed her in, the crowd had closed around them. They made it out the other side, somehow, avoiding the guards snatching up people to lock them away - or so they said - and the press of the crowd.

Philo led her down alleys, into spaces between cramped buildings that she would never have known existed. He knew the Row impossibly well. She wondered how much time he’d spent there, under the eyes of suspicious Fae who only saw a Burgish man, looking for something stolen from him long ago.

Thinking about it made her chest ache, so she tried not to as they scrambled up a rickety staircase and into a small attic room that was, technically, theirs.

She caught her breath, listening to the yelling down on the street. The thin walls and crooked door did little to muffle the sounds. The snow, falling slowly through the air, kept it more distant than anything else.

“You’re hurt,” Philo said, catching her attention before she could pull back the blanket they’d nailed over the window. He touched her jaw, callused fingers cold as he tilted her head to the side.

The sting along the side of her face only registered then. She’d grown used to putting aside pain long ago, shutting it out of her mind until she had the time to deal with it. She reached up and touched her cheek, her fingers coming away wet and sticky. She hissed. “How bad is it?”

He frowned, dark eyes assessing. He couldn’t stand up straight in their little hideaway, the ceiling brushing his head even then, as he went hunting off across the room, returning with a rag that he held to the wound, carefully. “It’s going to need stitches,” he said. “Might scar.”

She scoffed. “We can’t afford to pay someone to doctor me.” They could barely afford this little space, though the Puck owner of the house offered it to them on the cheap, apparently out of some favor to Philo for some undiscussed piece of history between them.

“Don’t need to,” Philo said. “Hold this in place.” He lifted her hand and pressed it to the rag, reaching into his coat as he did. He came out with a little roll of leather, smooth and black, that he laid down on their one wobbly table, unrolling it with a practiced flick of his wrist.

“You carry around a sewing kit?” she asked, looking at the thread inside, the curved needles, the various other bits and bobbles, bemused and caught by the unlikeliness of it, though perhaps she shouldn’t have been. He always seemed to have _something_ tucked away into his coat that she wouldn’t have expected.

He smiled, tight. “I learned to keep what I might need on me,” he said, drawing a needle from the kit. “Things tended to go missing, in the boy’s home. At least if you were carrying it, you could put up a fight when people tried to take it away.”

And there was that ache, again, flaring with the ease at which he explained, as though such activities were normal and everyone should have feared that their possessions would be stolen if they weren’t ready to fight tooth and nail to defend them. It was a philosophy she’d only learned to appreciate later in her life, as an adult.

“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “it’s not a sewing kit.” He threaded the needle and squinted at it. “You should sit.”

“You’re going to stitch me up?” she asked, unable to keep all of the disbelief out of her voice. 

“It’s alright,” he said, mouth twitching again in the corners. “You don’t have to worry. I’m quite good at it. Lots of practice.” He glanced her way, met her eyes briefly, before looking away again, shrugging his shoulders, and she thought of all the scars across his body.

The older ones tended to have rough, uneven borders. They grew cleaner, more neatly healed the newer they were. He’d had more practice by then, she supposed, too afraid to visit a doctor, even for some of the wounds that must have been deep and terrible. She reached out, touched his cheek, his growing-in beard rough against her palm, and said, “Philo….”

He leaned into the touch, eyes falling half-shut. Always hungry to be touched, was her Philo, starving for it behind his tight smiles and shuttered eyes. He cleared his throat. “Let’s put you to rights, then,” he said, gesturing at the chair.

She sat and pulled the rag away from her face. The bleeding seemed not to have stopped at all, if she were any judge. He grimaced, just a bit, leaning over and pulling skin here and there, matching edges of torn flesh.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said, apology in his voice. 

“It’s alright,” she assured. She’d taken worse and from less kind hands. She closed her eyes, feeling the punch of the needle through flesh, the tug of the thread, fast, repetitive motions that lacked any hesitation.

Philo knew what he was doing, as good as his word, mending the cut and then turning. He broke the rime of frost over the top of their water and poured some into a bowl, bringing it over, wiping up the smears of blood as she watched him.

“What?” he asked, finally, his fingers gone pale, bluish, from the cold and exposure to the water. She took his hand in hers, feeling the way he started, the little shudder that translated up his arm, into his body, when she stood.

“You do good work,” she told him, moving into his space, listening to his breath catch. His fingers were like ice when she brought them to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. 

A muscle in his jaw jumped, though, some shadow crossing his eyes. He said, “It never should have happened. If I’d--”

“Philo.” She curled her arm around his neck, bringing their bodies closer, until he had to look at her, instead of whatever scene played out in his memory. “Thank you.” It took him a moment to stir against her when she kissed him, to relax the iron-rigid set of his shoulders and spine, but then he curled into her, coming to life all at once.

“It’s cold,” he said, against her mouth, when she started tugging at the clasps on her tunic.

“We’ll keep each other warm,” she promised, and he made a sound, almost hurt, pulling her closer. Mending him, she had a feeling, would take much more than a thin needle and dark thread. But she’d never feared a challenge and she loved him far, far too much to fail.


End file.
